Underneath the poles, water is always solid; there it is similar to the hardest rocks, and may be formed by the chisel of the statuary like a stone. The following circumstance, noticed by Bishop Watson, will show the solidity that water is capable of acquiring when divested of a large portion of caloric. It is related that at the whimsical marriage of Prince Gallitzen, in 1739, the Russians applied ice to the same purposes as stone. A house, consisting of two apartments, was built with large blocks of ice; and the icy cannon, which were fired in honor of the day, performed their office more than once without bursting. During the severe winter of 1740, observes M. de Bomare, a palace of ice, 52 feet long, 16 wide, and 20 high, was built at Petersburgh, according to the most elegant rules of art. The river Neva afforded the ice, which was from two to three feet thick, blocks of which were cut and embellished with various ornaments. When built up, the different parts were colored by sprinkling them over with water of various tints. Six cannons, made of and mounted with ice, with wheels of the same matter, were placed before the palace; and a hempen bullet was driven by one of these cannons, in the presence of the whole court, through a board two inches thick, at the distance of sixty paces. Cowper remarks,-- “No forest fell, Imperial mistress of the fur-clad Russ, When thou wouldst build--no quarry sent its stores T’ enrich thy walls; but thou didst hew the floods, And make thy marble of the glassy wave. Silently as a dream the fabric rose, Ice upon ice; the well-adjusted parts Were soon conjoin’d; nor other cement ask’d Than water interfused to make them one. Lamps gracefully disposed, and of all hues, Illumin’d ev’ry side. Long wavy wreaths Of flowers, that feared no enemy but warmth, Blush’d on the pannels, which were once a stream, And soon to slide into a stream again.” In the most northern part of the Russian territory, the cold is sometimes sufficient to freeze mercury, or 72 degrees below the freezing point of water.[78] It is so intense in some seasons, that the poor inhabitants cannot venture out of their miserable huts but at the hazard of their lives. “There, through the prison of unbounded wilds, Barr’d by the hand of nature from escape, Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around Strikes his sad eye but deserts lost in snow, And heavy loaded groves, and solid floods, That stretch athwart the solitary vast Their icy horrors to the frozen main.”